Transactionality

I was going to write a post about transactionality, but it turns out most of what I was about to write, I had already written in a post on reciprocity (note to self to read my own blog more). So, this post is going to be shorter than I had anticipated. Keeping a mental tally of how much you and the opposite person are contributing to a platonic or romantic relationship sounds like a cheerless and even petty exercise. But, reciprocity is important in any relationship. Men are not socialised in reciprocity and my previous post talks about this at more length. I feel like many people are concerned about not taking the opposite person in a relationship for granted. We should also be concerned about not being taking for granted because in the long run, that is unhealthy for everyone involved. Expressing boundaries in a relationship can either salvage a relationship or end a potentially lopsided relationship. Of course, different people have different abilities and capacities to contribute to a relationship. And, if we feel value and cherished in a relationship the mental tallies fade into the background. We only bring them out when we feel taken for granted. And, those mental tallies are useful to assess whether our feelings are justified or without reason. Because sometimes we can simply forgot what the other person has done for us.

Back to Blogging

 I haven’t blogged in more than two months, ever since I turned 40. This has been my longs break from blogging, and the reason is I have started journaling. I read a book called “A Life of One’s Own” by Marion Millner. I felt like this British woman writing a hundred years ago was describing my feelings about my life. The sense that life was passing me by, the desire to connect with others but feeling underwhelmed by the experience of interacting with others, broadly, that I was not living life to the fullest. Millner took up journalling to observe her own thought processes and hopefully distil some wisdom from the observations. So, she started recording what made her happy. With the journalling, there is the temptation to only journal when you are feeling sad or anxious, and I realised I have been doing that. So, this is a reminder to follow Millner’s and (also?) blog about happy moments.

But, I miss blogging and I think I am going to continue to blog intermittently. I have written about why I blog several times before, for example, here, here and here. I think there is something to be said for contemplating your thoughts and feelings with some amount of dispassion, as one must if one is writing for a readership of more than oneself.

Turning 40

I have never been big on marking birthdays, but this is a big one. So, I went back to previous posts about birthdays and it turns out that there are just two—for Nos 35 and 36. I turned 35 during the first year of Covid, and my post was mostly about how that year had been nothing like what I had thought or hoped for. I was surprisingly compassionate to myself, marvelling at how well I had coped with the pandemic and the various tribulations it had brought. It also expressed relief at having something to say when people would ask how I was celebrating. I am happy to report that having nothing to say to that question is no more a cause of embarrassment. Maybe its because I am older, maybe the pandemic has made social introversion more acceptable. But, a friend of mine who turned 40 last year told me to mark the occasion, else I might regret it. I bought a car a few months ago, and wrote about how it felt like something I needed to do before I turned 40.

Turning 40 is a time to reflect not just on the previous year but on the previous decade. My 30s were stormier than my 20s, which included the two best years of my life—journalism school in Chenna and the masters in Holland. It was also the decade that I discovered journalism, worked as a journalist for more than half a decade and eventually tired of it. My 30s were off to a turbulent start, being stricken with dengue in my 31^st year and the sleeping demons that it roused in me. But, I managed to life myself out of that morass and put my life back on track, which is, and may always be, my biggest achievement. And, then pandemic struck bang in the middle of my 30s. It make years to understand and reckon with the impact of the pandemic, even though neither I or my lived ones suffered grave misfortune. And, any scorecard must consider the fact that the world has become a far angrier place over the last decade or so. And, surviving in it and trying to thrive in it is no mean feat. And, while my 30s had some turbulent times, they were also a period of tremendous self-growth and accumulation of self-knowledge.

Planning for futures

The other day, I came cross a tweet that said "People are still planning for futures that are connected to a world that doesn't exist anymore". My first reaction was "My feelings exactly!" and my next reaction was "What are they supposed to do instead?". The Gramsci quote about the monster-filled interregnum between the dying old world and not-yet-born new world rings true, but until the new world is born one can only plan keeping the old world in mind. It is easy to slip into despair at the state of the world, and it is also easy to romanticize despair. One can continually come up more creative ways to express despair and feel very smart for doing it. I know because I have done quite a bit of it in the past. My favourite line, that I would trot out to anyone who would listen was “I am smart enough to realise that most social science research is bull-shit, but not smart enough to make original contributions. It has features in my blog here and here in the past. I felt smart saying it, and I felt that it conveyed humility, wit and self-awareness. On this blog, I have talked about it here and here. Now, I think it is time to retire that line. It serves no purpose now, if it ever did in the past. It is also a cop-out because it justifies inaction. If the world is uncertain, if you are not too smart or too dumb, maybe the best thing is to do nothing? I don’t mean to sound self-righteous. Expressing despair can be cathartic and sometimes one needs to take a brake from action. But those should be explicitly stated choices 

Cobalt Blue

For the longest time, I have had a mental block against novels written by Indian writers in English. One of my complaints was that Indians writing in English appeared to feel the need to prove that they knew the language well. The result was stilted and overwrought prose. This might be still true of some Indian writers writing in English. But, it is certainly not true of the best writing, if it ever was. Indians have made English their own and, as the protests against Hindi hegemony show, it is the only language that is widely spoken and acceptable to people across the length and breadth of India. I don’t want to paint an overly optimistic picture of English’s place in Indian society—fluency in English is a marker of class (and, hence, caste) status. But, that is a discussion for another blog post. Despite all this, I haven’t managed to overcome my reluctance towards reading Indian novels in English. The novels feel like they are set in a foreign land, and I struggle to conjure up the sights and sounds of the India I know from the writing. I say this as someone who is much more fluent in English than in the two Indian languages I know, so it’s a good thing I have no ambitions of writing a novel. Today, I just finished a novel titled Cobalt Blue, originally written in Marathi, which is the Indian language I am less fluent, even though it is my “mother tongue” (I am one of the few Indians of my generation who has a different mother and father tongue). I would have struggled to read the original, and I would have given up before I realized what an amazing novel it is. I read the English translation, and found myself translating some sentences back into imperfect Marathi.  It is a searing story about love, loneliness and loss set in Pune, my favourite Indian city. It spoke to me in a way that no book has in a long time, and I can’t recommend it enough, especially to people familiar with Pune and/or Maharashtrians. It has also spurred to seek out more translated works from India.

Professions for the end of world

Since I am at a professional crossroads, I spend a lot of time thinking (and fretting) about what I should do next. This is an interesting time to be at a professional crossroads, to say the least. I have nothing to add about the state of the job market due to economic headwinds, a rogue US presidency and the advent of AI. There is, of course, the question of whether one will be able to find a job of one’s liking, given these various problems. But, before that, there is the question of what types of jobs should one aim for that i) make a positive contribution to society and the environment ii) do not require you to be tight-lipped about genocide. iii) are unlikely to be gobbled up by AI. Jobs that are likely to be relevant right up to the fast-approaching end of the world. I can think of only three broad sectors: art, care and political organizing (food-, clothing- and housing-related professions have moved far beyond sustenance needs into wasteful and unequal consumption). I don’t think these need any further explanation. Much more brilliant and eloquent minds than me have written about why artistic expression is a human imperative. Care, in all its forms (medical, social, mental), is a noble profession; and even a cynic like me believes  that we need to strive for a better world right up to the end of the world. These are the only broad professions that feel meaningful to me to pursue at this moment. I wish I could add academia to this list, but I cannot, in good faith, do that. A lot of academic social science is vacuous, tediously self-referential and status-quoist. We cannot rely on academic social scientists to make sense of, much less foretell, the changes in our physical and social worlds.

 

 

 

Work For The Sake of Working (or Bullshit Jobs)

//this is a post that I wrote in May 2015 when I was doing my Master's in Holland///

In another life, when I was gainfully employed, I often wondered whether it would make any difference to the rest of the world if my job profile simply disappeared. As a financial markets reporter, I spent a lot of time calling up traders and asking them why a particular bond, stock or currency pair had risen or fallen in price. Usually, they had no idea themselves and would trot out one of the many hackneyed market phrases that essentially say nothing—profit booking, value buying, various kinds of fears or expectations of investors. Often, a trader would read from a competing news publication’s story to give me a reason. (How did I know? Because every half-decent journalist keeps a close tab on the competition).

But, mine is hardly the only job of questionable social or economic value (how to define value is one of those grand questions that social scientists have been grappling with for ages, but bear with me if you can). As advances in technology have reduced the demand for employment in manufacturing, especially in the developed world, an overabundance of new jobs has emerged in the services sector. Not just internet-related jobs, such as GIF specialist or content curator, but also PR consultant, life coach, corporate lobbyist, telemarketer, many jobs in finance, administration and human resources etc. This is not just a rich-world phenomenon--it is also seen in developing country metropolises such as Mumbai, where I used to work.

How did this situation come about? In 1930, John Maynard Keynes predicted that by the early 21^st century, gains in productivity due to technological advances would reduce the duration of the work week in advanced countries to 15 hours. But, instead of enjoying the fruits of automation, we have invented entire new categories of what anthropologist David Graeber calls “bullshit jobs”. Peter Fleming, an economist, says most jobs in rich countries have moved away from “the baseline of biological self-preservation”.  He says it's “this growing disconnect between labour as a biological/social requirement versus work as a cultural artefact that has seen it take on a life of its own…”. In other words, work for the sake of working. Yes, many jobs have been outsourced to poor countries, but increased automation is reducing the total number of manufacturing jobs in the world, according to a Bloomberg Businessweek column citing the Boston Consulting Group. We are working far more hours than are required to produce the world’s total output of goods and useful services (assuming that all goods produced are useful).

As Graeber points out, the contradiction here is jarring. Capitalism thrives by cutting costs and trimming flab, not by adding layers upon layers of excess fat. Are bullshit jobs an innovative way of putting money in the hands of people so that they can buy the products manufactured by machines and keep the capitalist system running? Is this a variation of Keynes’ idea that governments should pay people to dig holes and fill them up again during downturns to stimulate demand? Since many of these jobs exist in or feed off the financial sector, is there a link between the growth of such jobs and the ascent of financial capital after the Gold Standard was abolished?

Whatever the reasons for the existence of bullshit jobs, it will be interesting to see what the future holds for them. Today, the biggest problem of the rich world is a lack of demand—most people are unable or unwilling to buy enough products to keep their economies growing. Wave upon wave of quantitative easing has done little else than inflate stocks and bond prices. The obvious solution is to raise government spending or to increase wages of workers so they have more money to spend, as some countries such as Germany, Japan and the U.S. are doing. But, will the number of bullshit jobs also increase in the process?

Choosing the Right Therapist

Is it a wonder that an overthinker would overthink the task of finding a therapist to help them with overthinking (among other things)? Before this year, I had had therapy on two occasions. On the more recent one, it was because it was free (though not particularly useful). The first time was when I was at the lowest I had ever been, a period I call the Watershed year. That therapist was the second one I tried after having swiftly rejected the first one for being like a shiny automaton. With the second therapist, I instantly knew she was the right one for me, and, indeed, she was. Call it chemistry, call it intuition, call it a sixth sense, but I have never had that feeling about any therapist I have met since. However, a lack of chemistry may be a good enough reason to turn down a potential romantic interest, but one has to be more concrete if rejecting a therapist. Not just because the therapist deserves a better explanation, but because you owe it to yourself to think your reasons through. I questioned the approach of looking for chemistry in a therapist, which I deconstructed (in my case) to mean someone who vows with me with their intelligence and who is very articulate. I had decided that such an approach was shallow. But, in the end, I decided to change therapists, even though during our last session, the therapist dropped some intriguing insights about me. I realise that there is no perfect therapist, and one simply needs to find someone who is competent and compatible. But, I can’t help thinking that whatever choice I made, I would feel like it was the wrong one.

Man Flu

 I have had a cold for the last week or so, and I suspect it is man flu. 'Man flu' is a derisive term for the phenomenon of men over-reacting to minor illness. Apparently, there may be physiological reasons for why men appear to exaggerate the symptoms of a minor illness like a cold or a flu. Apparently, men have weaker immune symptoms than women. I am certain that I am susceptible to man flu, because when I get a cold, it puts me in a horrible mood, much worse than the symptoms warrant. And, I have written before about how colds are particularly annoying because you are indisposed but well enough to feel the full weight of your symptoms. I have never had a cold and not thought, at least for a brief while, that it would never go away. On more than a few occasions, the cold was brought on by me doing vigorous exercise despite feeling under the weather. It has happened often enough that I should know better than to exercise when I am feeling a bit iffy. But, it is amazing what lengths people go to when faced with restlessness. And, the inevitable self-flagellation that follows the onset of sickness is par for the course.

Post-Vacation Doldrums

 I have realised that solitude is a necessary condition for blogging. Solitude was in short supply in the past three weeks—hence my blogging hiatus—as my parents were visiting me from India. Now, I am having a case of post-vacation doldrums. I felt a bit cramped during their visit as my apartment is not large enough for more than two people, especially when they don’t have independent lives. This thread of thought got me thinking about journalism college, when I was staying with four other men in a two bed-room apartment, which was only slightly bigger than my current one bedroom apartment. We also had two female friends who would spend most of their time at my place. I don’t remember feeling very cramped then. But, that was almost twenty years ago and I hadn’t had a bedroom to myself in years. I also didn’t know that bad company is worse than no company (to be clear, the company during journo school was great). But, cramped I did feel during my parents’ visit and I am relieved to have my space back. So, now I am in the past-vacation doldrums (blues is too strong a word). I am relieved that the holiday, as enjoyable as it was, is over, but I am not ready to go back to life. This feels like one of the ‘vacation from the vacation’ kind of things.

Driving Test

 I was going to write a blog post last evening or this morning about my attempts to calm myself before my driving test today. I was going to write about an expression in Marathi that means “do not hurry”, which is an oblique way of saying “do not panic”. But do not panic is useless advice to someone prone to panicking, so the useful advice is not to hurry. Slow down, and you will panic less. I remember my coach saying it during an interschool badminton sports meet when I was 13. For racquet games especially it is eminently reasonable advice as the haste to finish the point by forcing a winner can lead to what they call in tennis parlance as “unforced errors”. But, because I was running short on time, I decided to do an anxiety mediation instead.

I managed to keep my nerve in the test and passed. One of my aims before I turned 40 was to get a car and a license to feel more like an adult. That aim has now been achieved and it feels like an anti-climax. There is no jubilation, no huge surge of relief. If I had failed I could have kept driving on my Indian license. Yes, it is not advisable to do so in the current political climate, but a couple of months ago I was dead against getting a car of fear of being deported for traffic violations. But, that bridge I had already crossed, inspired by the chutzpah of some first-year PhD students in my department. I had decided that until I am in the US, I will try to live as full a life as possible. Or else I might as well go back voluntarily. And, it feels good that my driving skills have been validated by a representative of the commonwealth of Massachusetts.

First Night in 114 King Street

 Yesterday, was brutal because it was a double move. My colleague and his partner were moving to the same town as me, so we first moved their stuff and then came back for my stuff in the same truck. My first impressions of my new place were not great either. It was very hot--the flipside of having a bright cheerful apartment with a lot of windows. And, the traffic was much louder than I remembered it from the viewing. Not to mention that the bedroom door was hanging from the top hinge. From a functional perspective, my previous apartment was better. Lots of storage and kitchen counter space, and modern fittings. It was also a 10-minute cycle ride from the university. It is tempting to keep the status quo if it is bearable, especially if the future is laden with uncertainty. But, I had decided that functionality is over-rated and I should aspire to a better quality of life. So, here I am, in the town that I call a mini-Bristol.

Last Night at 16 Brandywine Drive

One always has more stuff than one realizes, and one only realizes when it is time to pack. I spent the day packing and I am tired and stressed about whether all my stuff will fit into the U-Haul tomorrow. But, as per tradition, I am going to write a short post as it is my last night in a house. It just occurred to me that this is the first time I am moving out of choice. My last move was because I was leaving the UK, the one before that was because I couldn’t wait to move out after finishing my PhD to escape house mates from hell. Which is a choice, I suppose. The two moves before that were because my live-in landlords soured on  me. This apartment is quite comfortable and my only major grouch is that its floorboards are very creaky, and my upstairs neighbour has a heavy tread. If they had agreed to move me to a top-floor pond-facing apartment I might well have renewed my lease. My job is only for another year, so there were perfectly reasonable reasons to stay put. But, I went with my gut and decided not to move out of this perfectly decent apartment to a city that I keep telling everyone is a mini Bristol. New car, new apartment, lots of changes happening in life.

A New Car and Adulting

I went and picked up my new car today. There are obvious reasons for getting a car in the US if you can afford one. Except in a handful of large cities like NYC, Boston or San Francisco, one’s quality of life is severely curtailed without one. But, one of my reasons is that I am turning 40 this year, and it felt like something I need to do before that happens. The traditional trappings of success—well-paying job, home, car, wife and kids—have never been a draw for me, and I am fine with the fact that I have not hit any of these markers. But, a couple of months ago, I suddenly started feeling like navigating the process of buying a car and owning a car would be good for not just for the quality of my life but also for my self-confidence. I remember years ago in Holland when I was sitting at a dinner table with my housemates. Everyone else was talking about what pets they had as a kid, and when someone asked me, I told them I never had any pets. “Then what did you take care of?”. That is when I realised that children are encouraged to have pets—ranging from dogs to something as low maintenance as a hamster—to teach them to be responsible. This is a trite example, but I feel like owning a car would be the grown-up version of owning a hamster. I have lived in three different countries other than the one I grew up in and I set myself up without knowing anyone locally in two of them. But, I still feel like I need this adulting experience. The process of buying a  car and all the hassles that come with it can be tedious especially if you don’t have a partner to accompany you in the process (or hinder you, who can tell?). And, in a world engulfed in flames it is easy to fall into fatalism and lament about the pointlessness of earthly pursuits. But, long-term singletons owe it to themselves to not let the absence of a partner stop them from living a full life.

I am not a natural at driving, just like I am not a natural at swimming. I am taking my time getting used to the speeds, the rules and driving on the other side of the road. Things that didn’t used to bother me while driving in India, such as staying at the center of the lane, have been an issue. And, I suck at any manouvere that involves reversing the car. But a least I have my own car, which I have fully insured, so I don’t have to worry about wrecking someone else’s car.

Men, Reciprocity and Care

In recent memory, there are two instances where I showed care towards male friends and was miffed by their lack of reciprocity and/or gratitude. I find it particularly annoying that some men are bad at taking care of themselves, but when someone offers them care, they lap it up without much thought. It might be the case that my expectations of care/gratitude are unreasonably high. And, one often, if not always, has the option of withdrawing care if one is not satisfied by how it is received. But, it is not secret that cishet men are bad at care/reciprocity. Many south Asian men, in particular, go from being pampered by their mothers or sisters to being pampered by their wives or girlfriends, or at least expecting to be. That said, I have nothing to say about why men are bad at care/reciprocity that hasn’t been said by wiser people before.

Obviously, one doesn’t want to keep excel spreadsheets of who did what in platonic and romantic relationships because then there is no difference between those interactions and business transactions. Care can come in many forms—physical, emotional, material. People may have differing abilities as well as inclinations to offer care and that is fine. Relationships can also fail over differing expectations of reciprocity and care, and that is fine too. But, I do feel one should be conscious of both the balance of acts of care and the ability of the other person to reciprocate, at least in the early stages of a friendship/relationship. And, especially if one is a man as most men are socialized to take others for granted. Else, it is easy for relationships to become lop-sided and/or wither.

Values vs Rules

Apologies if this post seems like it is all over the place. Ideally, one should live according to one's values, if nothing else, to stave of conscience troubles and according to rules to stave off practical troubles. But, this assumes that values are fully determined and unchanging. Even if we believe that values are unchanging, we might not even be aware of our values until confronted by situations that bring them into question. “Do what feels right/listen to your gut and if you are breaking rules, don’t get caught” seems like reasonable advice. Instinct lies at the intersection of mind and body, and can be a useful guide for action. “Our bodies leak truths all the time” as I read recently in a brilliant book. For instance, we feel uncomfortable in some people’s presence, even if there is nothing problematic in the words they use and their expressions are not hostile. Its our guts telling us to be wary of this person. But, a) our gut can be wrong  b) “what feels right, is right” seems like an inadequate moral code. We should allow for our gut to be overruled by our thinking mind, just as we allow the opposite. And, there should be some values that are beyond the influence of how we are felling on a particular day.

Swimming and Parallel/Reverse Parking

I thought I had blogged about how swimming is unnaturally difficult for me because I am among the minority of the population that are sinkers, but it turns out I have just talked about it a lot. Apparently, most people are floaters, whose bodies don't sink to the floor like stones in water. Swimming coaches say sinkers shouldn't feel too bad because it just menas they have low body fat and/or high bone density. But, that is scant comfort to someone thrashing about in the water. I have had swiming lessons twice in  my life---once when I was about 12 and the second time a few months ago. I could swim after the first set of lessons, but I can't swim to save my life. The chief lesson that I learnt during my second set of swimming lessons was to use a nose guard to prevent wqater from entering my nose. And I got that from a youtube video, not the swimming coach. When you are bad at something there are only two things to do--make epace with the fact or practice. I have made temporary peace with the fact that I am bad at swimming. But, in recent days, I have been reminded of another activity that I am bad at--reverse and parallel parking. I am a decent-enough driver, but when it comes to moving backwards, my brain freezes (which probably means I am not a decent-enough driver). I am twrribel at reverse parking, but fortunately, they dont' test that skill. I feel like people who reverse park are showing off because there are very few situations where you need to. But, they do test parallel parking, and the first time I practiced it a few days ago, I wasn't so bad.I got it right the first couple of time, hit the curb the next few times, and then got it right again. But, this evening, I must have practiced the manoeuvre ten times, and just got it right once. No matter what I tried, I just couldn’t land it. Ouch! The thinking mind knows that failing a driver’s test is no big deal, and that I should just take driving lessons before trying next time. But, the animal mind is a different beast, so cue a bit of anxiety. So, there is one other thing you can do when you are bad at something, in addition to acceptance and practice. You can laugh at yourself, lighten the mood, take the pressure off.

In Praise Of Pomodoros

Concentrating intensely has never been my strong suit, and I have been feeling that more than even in recent months. Some of the tasks I have been assigned are intensely tedious and I just can’t seem to keep my focus. So, I have started doing Pomodoros, which are 25-mins-long work sessions interspersed with 5 minute breaks. After four such sessions, you take a longer break. Twenty-five minutes is a manageable chunk of time. At no point of the session will you be left with a dismal feeling if you look at how long you have to go before the session ends. I did Pomodoros years ago in Bristol, when I would meet with other PhD students in a cafe for weekly group-writing sessions. That worked well, until i discovered that I preferred working on a desktop in the PhD office, which was a very pleasant room. I am not typically a fan of the glass-and-steel building it was housed in, but that meant it got plenty of light in dreary English weather. And, the walls facing outwards were all windows, and I love gazing out of windows. Pacing about the room and gazing out of windows were essential to my research process, and I keep asking myself why I don't do more of it. I also tried doing Pomodors by myself during my PhD, marking completed sessions with notches on a post-it note. With my current intensely dreary and ill-defined task, Pomodoros have been a godsend. Since the endpoint is not very clear, I have decided to allocate a set number of Pomodoros, and consider what I have at the end of those sessions as the finished product. 

Spring 2003 Energy

As the drums start to beat more loudly for war with Iran, a lot of commentators are pointing to the similarities with the spring of 2003, ahead of Bush-Cheney-Rumsfeld’s war with Iraq. I had just finished two listless years of high school or what they call ‘junior college’ in Mumbai. All parents believe their children are uniquely capable, but none more so than Indian parents, so I had I been coaxed to prepare for the notoriously difficult entrance test to India’s premier engineering colleges, despite having neither the talent or the inclination for it. Being the news junkie that I still am, the top-most thing on my mind was the build-up to the invasion of Iraq. I remember the telecast of the infamous UN security Council session where US lies about Iraq’s Weapons of Mass Destruction were given the imprimatur of evidence. Colin Powell, the least hawkish and the most dignified member of Bush’s inner circle, was trotted out to lie. The picture of him holding up vials to demonstrate Iraq’s chemical weapons capabilities is the defining image of war propaganda in the post-9/11 era. I remember my father scoffing at my grandfather, who believed the evidence presented by Powell to be credible. Even to the then-18-year-old me the evidence felt like something someone could just make up. Lessons are never learnt because no one—not Bush and Blair and their respective cabinets, not media pundits, not the New York Times--paid a price for lying about Iraq.  Powell was the only person to express public contrition and banish himself from public life.

Send in the Clowns

I started a clowning class two months ago, and because this is such an eminently bloggable topic, I kept putting off writing about it. Today, was the last class. My feelings about clowning have waxed and waned, ever since a friend asked if I wanted to accompany her to the class. My initial reaction was a strong No, but on further reflection I decided to take the plunge. My reasons were to learn to get out of my head, become less self-conscious and to become more comfortable with silliness. I remember family stories about my infectious laughter when I was a child, and I was curious to see if that part still lived inside of me. My initial enthusiasm was stoked by the novelty of it, and how people’s eyes would light up with curiosity and admiration when I told them I was doing a clowning class. It’s a cool thing to do, and trust me to come up with the language to make it sound cooler when explaining it to someone else. A friend also recommended a book about laughter which had a section on clowning, and I lapped it all up. But, as the last class progressed I began to find it increasingly tedious. I didn’t like my clown and didn’t particularly enjoy clowning. Until today. Our class was interrupted by a group of elder clowns in costume, who were more advanced students of the instructor. And, boy were they good. They all had very different characters, and such great characters they were. They performed for us as a group, and then we performed for them individually, and then we paired up with them and performed as a duo. This is not going to be my last post about clowning, but for now I am going to end this post by saying that their delightful interlude has inspired me to carry on clowning.

Asking Difficult Questions

I got back from Providence this afternoon, and it was a good trip even though I didn't feel good all or even most of the time. Academic events can be tricky to navigate and I wish I could approach them with a more positive attitude. I often find myself biting my lip and not giving an honest answer when someone asks me how I found a particular session. "It was good, but ......". At the same time, I realise that if someone was similarly critical of my work, I would be hurt too. What is it about academia that turns all of us into such fragile flowers? I asked some tough questions during audience questions and someone even complimented me later about the quality of the questions. But, I thought long and hard before asking them. Should I just ask softball questions and ask more probing questions in private? Would I be harming my career by asking difficult questions? Was I just trying to show off by asking difficult questions? Should I go back to being a journalist if I enjoy asking difficult questions? But, I decided that since this was a summer school, and as all the instructors were in secure employment and not shrinking daisies aka PhD students, they should be able to take difficult questions. Yes, you need to be strategic in any industry but you also has to ask if contorting yourself so much that you stop recognizing yourself is worth it? These might seem like a trivial question, but I have been thinking long and hard about whether I want to be in academia, and I suppose any career which doesn't allow you to be yourself (within limits) is possibly not the right career for you. 

Hypernormalization

 There is a word for what many people, including me, are doubtlessly feeling--that the world is crumbling before our eyes, but most people seem to be coping quite well. It’s called hypernormalization, which refers to people going about their daily lives in the midst of enormous social upheaval because of their perceived lack of power to respond to the upheaval and their inability to imagine a different world. I have written before about the struggle to find one’s place and purpose in a tumultuous world. The inability to answer the question: what does it mean to have a successful and purposeful life today? And, that post was written before Oct. 7, which has permanently changed many of us in ways that we don’t fully fathom yet. I don’t have any solutions, but I do know that pretending everything is normal is not worse than being paralyzed by despair. Or at least paralyzed for long, and seeing despair as an ethical response to the upheaval. In the past few days, I have been watching a video that perfectly captures both the pain and injustice of today’s world and the hope we need. It starts with a white American woman and an adorable curly-haired brown little girl. The video starts with both of them pretending to be sleeping bunnies. They then wake up around and start dancing, which is when we see both the girl’s legs are prosthetics--she is a double amputee from Gaza, but you would never know it just by looking at her cheerful angelic face. If a child double amputee whose father and siblings are still trapped in Gaza can laugh and small, the case for despair feels much weaker.

Words Once Said

 I had an interaction recently where I responded to some mildly inconsiderate behavior with a calculatedly cruel message. Before responding, I knew I should have probably slept on it, and I knew I would regret if I didn't, but I sent it anyway. The person immediately responded with contrition as my message accused them of being callous, but then blocked me after a few hours. I didn't realize what I had done until at least two days later and I was shocked by how I calculating I was in crafting the message to cause maximum damage even though I was in a state of agitation. Of course, it was too late to say sorry since I had no way to contact the person. Words once said can sometimes not been taken back and words can burn bridges. I briefly considered looking the person up online and contacting them to say sorry, but a friend rightly pointed out that 1) it would seem stalkerish since it was someone I had met on a dating app 2) they were probably over it since we had not known each other for long at all and 3) the only purpose of the apology would be to assuage my guilt. And, sometimes you just have suck it up and live with the guilt rather than the burden the aggrieved person with your need for redemption. But, it was a useful reminder that nice people can always behave in horrible ways. I have written before about how some people, usually men, from South Asia find it difficult to say sorry. But, it is also the case that some people behave recklessly because they can say sorry easily if they mess up. Not saying sorry or saying so sorry too easily are both problematic. 

Love on the Spectrum

 I have been watching a dating show recommended by a friend called Love On the Spectrum, and there is so to learn from it. In the first season, the conversations between the paticipants, all of whom are on the autism spectrum felt very stilted. I doubted any of them would end up together. But, most of the did, which got be thinking about a book that I am reading which talks about unconscious communication. One of the quotes I love is “we leak truths from our bodies all the time”. People like me place a lot of emphasis on good conversation. But, then we are often left wondering why we don’t feel drawn to some people we have good conversations with. People make you feel a certain way in their presence through their words but also their bodies. Often, we try to pin down the reason for the discomfort or bad vibes that we feel in our bodies from the presence of some people. Rationalizing a feeling is a fool’s errand, but it is difficult not to do.

And, its difficult not to love the participants of the show, even the men. The men are free of artifice and masculine conditioning and speak of their loneliness and insecurities in heartbreakingly frank ways.

Indo-Pak Conflict

To describe the Indo-Pak conflict as being clouded by a "fog of war" would be a gross understatement. It feels like two entirely differnt conflcits are unfloding on the screens of Indian and Pakistani TV viewers. There is false reporting and there is fantasy reporting. Indian media covered itself in infamy by reportng the capture of a Pakistani fighter pilot, the destruction of Karachi port and the capture of a majot Paksitani city. All products of journalists' imagination so unhinged that woudl make even Israel's media blush.The thing is when you can trust news, an event becomes less real. Your mind imagines the reality to be ten tmies better or worse than its media depiction depending on your mood. In the university where I did my master's, there was a group of professors who were hard constructionists. Soft constructionists believe that reality is not independent of the language used to desribe it. The language co-constructs reality. Hard constructivists believe there is no objective external reality independent of the language used to describe it. This group was often the butt of our jokes. Now i think the joke's on us. 

Reading, Thinking and Writing

Close friends are those you can think aloud with. But, I don't have the energy to mediate on the nature of close friendships at the moment, so I am going to leave it at that. Yesterday, I was thinking aloud with a close friend, who is familiar with my writer’s block and super-extended struggles with motivation. I now have experience of academia in the US and UK. Far more knowledgeable people than me have written about how they are shitshows which are getting shittier year. There is nothing more I can add to that discussion, aside from corroboration with my personal experience. However, there are few professions that pay you to read, think and write. However, corrupted and contorted the original mission of academia is, it is still does offer opportunities to do that. Or at least, I can say my current circumstances give me that opportunity in ample measure. I have eloquently described my writer’s block to all those willing to listen, and frankly, those descriptions have started to feel forced and staid. It is time to try to write my way out of my writer’s block.

Reading This blog

I was going to title this post 'Meta Blog', thinking that I hadn't used this title before, but that's not the case. I haven’t written a blog post about blogging in ages, so maybe I forgot. This blog is more than seven years old, and the first few years were prolific, before I realised how personal diarish the blog had become. I took a step back in 2022, returned to blogging more regularly, picked up the pace again in 2023 before slowing down again. Now, I don’t blog more than once a week. I have written before how my output in the first wo years was so heavy because I was pouring out the accumulated wisdom of my life up to that time. After that catch-up phase, wisdom is accumulating more slowly, so there is less urgency to dispense it. So, I have decided to read my blog more even if I don’t post more often. It is amazing how mental states feel unique even though they are cyclical in nature. Chance are you have felt the way you feel before, the problem you are wrestling with you have grappled before,  and you possibly wrote a blog post to help you solve, alleviate or cope with it. Far be it from me to claim that this blog is a fount of wisdom. But, I have cumulatively put a lot of though in it, and there is so solace to be gained from reading old posts, even its only for myself. So, I have decided to read old posts more, instead of doom-scrolling in the evenings. 

Clouds Parting

A couple of weeks ago, the US had started to seem like a basket case. Those of us without strong ties to the US had started to think about how long we could continue living like this. It wouldn't be the end of the world if I had to return to India without a job or clear career prospects, right? But, over the past few days, I have started to feel more optimistic. Signs that the fascist juggernaut has started to sputter are there if one is prepared to countenance the possibility. Students who were expected to meekly accept their visa revocations are starting to fight back in the courts and talking to the media. Harvard, not an instution known for rocking the boat, refused to bend the President's demands. And, who would have ever thought Republican senators from Bible belt states would get heckled in town halls for doing nothing to stop the reverse the deportation of a Latino men. So, maybe it is these signs of the growing backlash to fascism, maybe I am adjusting to the new reality of a precarious immigration status, maybe I am recoginzing that one cannot remain suspended in a state of despair for an indefinite lenght of time and one must get on with one's life. But, my angst levels have definitely reduced over the past few days. But, as many people have said, hope is a muscle that helps bring new realities into being. 

Getting On With Life

The past few weeks have been difficult, to say the least. My emotional state has alternated between fear for my own immigration status, dread at the unfolding fascist hellscape and frustration at my writer's block. I had been wondering how long one can live paralysed by fear and uncertainty, especially when leaving is an option. Today, for the first time, I felt the paralysis lift from me even though the day started with ominous news about possible ICE activities on campus. On most days, the news would have pushed me into a funk for most of if not for the whole day. But, not today. I was concerned, but not alarmed, and I manage to do more work than I had in ages. By absolute standards, it was not a lot, but I was satisfied. The goal of mindfulness practices is not to destroy one's demons but to put some distance between you and them so that you can observe them rather than being engulfed by them. I have no illusions about the next few months. The political situation is likely to get worse before or if it gets better, and there will be dark days when one feels like a helpless vegetable. But, for the first time in weeks, I felt that I might be able to cope with it long enough to see what’s on the other side. I have been telling friends (and myself) that one cannot keep living like this, one has to get on with one’s life. Finally, I felt that I was beginning to heed my own advice.  

72 Hours

Last evening we got news that a student from my university had his visa revoked and had been given 72 hours to leave the country. Declaring 19-year-olds persona-non-grata as though they are high-level diplomats. This is not the first wantonly cruel act by this administration, and it won’t be the last. On hearing the news, I spent some time despairing about the condition of this student I don’t know but who is presumably my elder nephew’s age, the students who I do know who are at a high risk of being targeted due to their activism and nationalities, and the non-negligible risk of deportation to myself. I thought about the emotional toll and logistical challenge of packing up your life and leaving within a few days. Most of the people around me have lived here far longer than I have, with roots here that are much less tenuous than mine. Then, scrolling Twitter, I came across clips of Jewish Columbia/Barnard students who had chained themselves to the gates of the university to protest against its complicity in the targeting of its own students. And, the clips brought tears to my eyes. They were also so young, so steadfast yet cheerful. Their responses to reporters’ questions were thoughtful and without a trace of hubris or showboating. It is times like these when the worst and best of humanity is on display. The worst is difficult to miss, but one must make the effort to see the best.  

Hunger Strike

I don’t cry easily, but this morning I had rivulets of tears on my face while watching a documentary at a labor conference. I choose to watch the movie over attending other parallel sessions because the theme seemed to resonate with the present—ICW abducting students and spirting them away to detention centres in the back of beyond. And, I wasn’t disappointed. The movie was about a how prisoners in California organized hunger strikes to protest against solitary confinement. The Security Housing Units (SHUs) are, as one former inmate described it, jails within jails. Some inmates spent decades in them on suspicion of being gang members. In many cases, those suspicions were based on evidence as flimsy as having tattoos or reading books by Black Panthers. I was moved to pieces y the courage and fortitude of the inmates as well as their friends and family on the outside who were agitating for their rights. Most of the campaigners on the outside were women (as I have frequently pointed out, most a majority of protesters on Palestine marches are women). If people can organize in the hell that is the US prison system, anything is possible and it is important to be reminded of this fact in these dark times. The cherry on the cake was a panel discussion featuring two former jail survivors who had spent decades in prison. They spoke with a moral and intellectual clarity that blew me away. The movie also reminded me of a blog post I had written six years ago after reading a piece by a former black panther who had spent decades in solitary confinement in conditions even more harrowing than the ones described in the movie. The title of that post was “If you canbreathe, you can get through anything” and it had chimed with my focus on breathwork as part of my yoga practice. This is also a good reminder to return to my yoga practice, which I have neglected. I am trying to avoid sitting cross-legged as I am nursing a sprained ankle, but my yoga practice just doesn’t feel the same without that foundational pose.

February 2016

My last post was about how the present times feel like the first few weeks of the Covid pandemic. But, then my mind went back to the winter of 2016. I had returned to India after finishing my Master’s in Holland. In January, the Dalit student Rohit Vemula had taken his own life a few months ago after months of harassment by the university administrators in Hyderabad. His death had sparked protests in several central universities, which were at the time bastions of the ‘left’. And, then, the Modi government targeted India’s premier social science institution, JNU. It detained the head of JNU’s student union on charges of sedition, the same British-era law used to target revolutionaries. JNU was convulsed with student protests. I was visiting friends in Delhi at the time, who were also harbouring some students on the run from the police. I participated in a march too, my first student march ever. Such was the fervent in the air, such was the sense of outrage among all left-progressives that even stoic cynical me couldn’t remain untouched. I contemplated applying to JNU for my PhD studies. That phase passed and in a few months I was thrown into the most challenging period of my life. Trump’s fascist onslaught against students feels much more audacious and ferocious than Modi’s, but the parallels are unmistakable.

Events in India would continue to singe my heart over the coming years, but from a distance. And, then they would pale in comparison to the genocide in Gaza and the monsters that it unmasked.

If India offers lessons on how fascism in the US will unfold, they are lost on me. India is a right-wing society led by a far-right government. The US, for all its considerable ills is not. Maybe the fascist here are moving at breakneck speed because they know they have limited time.

 

It Feels Like The First Few Weeks of Covid Again

It is coming up to the five-year- anniversary of the first Covid Lockdown (in the UK) and it struck me a few days ago that the present times feel like those first weeks of March 2020. Trump's fascist takeover is in overdrive. Israel has resumed its genocide in Gaza Trump is gutting the American state, the threat of deportation hangs over every non-citizen who has participated in activism for Palestine or criticized Trump in any form or manner. Just like then, no one knows how the next few weeks and months will pan out. Just like then, I read horror stories in the press but doesn’t know anyone who has been personally affected (yet). And, a sense of foreboding that things will get worse before they get better as the fascist juggernaut has some way to go before it burns out or burns the world. So, I went back to my posts from that period out of curiosity. I was surprised to be reminded that my mental and physical state were poor. In the past few weeks, I haven’t been sleeping great, and I feel myself filling up with tears, but, unlike that past fateful March, my anxiety hasn’t kicked into high gear. My chief fear at that time was how I would cope with losing access to the PhD room at uni, which was my safe haven away from crazy housemates. As it turned out, I coped just fine, and was able to return to the PhD office after a few months. I wouldn’t catch Covid until two years thence, but the pandemic did cause tumult in my life, as it did with most others. Tumult that we didn’t and couldn’t have imagined during those first few weeks of that March. We, and our world, carry those scars with us. But if there is one lesson we can draw (and if one can rue or reminisce the past, one can occasionally learn from it) is that we like our all creatures great and small, are endlessly adaptable. Someone said to “Adapt or perish is nature’s inexorable imperative”. There is, of course, a difference between adaptation and submission. One should not submit to fascism, of all things, and resist as much as possible. As I write this post, I am reminded of a passage from Ship Fever, a short story by one of my favourite authors, Andrea Barrett. The context is the Irish potato famine and the ensuing typhus epidemic and, I think it is worth quoting at some length. “That was what she’d learned from her grandmother, during the days they’d cared for the sick together. You ought not to lie down and let your fate roll over you, her grandmother taught her; neither ought you stand unbending, as her father had, and wait for fate to lop off your head. There was a bending, weaving, cunning way, in which you appeared to give in but rolled aside just slightly, evading the blow at the last minute. The way of eating whenever there was food to eat, sleeping whenever a stray minute came; never angering anyone stronger nor harming anyone weaker. “Make your mind like a pond,” her grandmother had said, when she found Nora weeping at night. “Push away longing and fury, and make your mind still, like water.””

Time to Lay Low

 Till yesterday, I was reassuring people spooked by Trump's crackdown on Palestine activists. I told a friend that Mahmoud Khalil was targeted for his high-profile activism, for being Palestinian and because he is at Columbia. You are not going to get detained for attending a rally at UMass. But, yesterday, I joined the ranks of the spooked. An Indian PhD student at Columbia who was not even an activist, just a sympathizer, had her visa revoked and fled to Canada to avoid the ICE dragnet. Those of us who imagined ourselves quite low in the list of potential targets are scared because that list has now been scrambled, which was probably the intention of the powers-that-be at ICE. Although I realise my odds of being targeted are still quite low, I can’t take any chances, and I have already taken some evasive action. Now is the time to lie low and let the fascists juggernaut barrel on towards more powerful people and wait for the inevitable backlash. Because there doesn’t seem to be any method to this madness, and capitalism has little tolerance for prolonged madness.

Till yesterday, I admit I looked at people who had stayed silent on Palestine with judgemental eyes. But, now they have been proven right. Or rather, their collective silence has allowed the situation to deteriorate to such an extent that silence now seems the most judicious course of action. And, I will not tolerate any “told you so”s from them. That said, I must constantly guard against feeling sanctimonious because of the little activism I have done for Palestine. I have been a scab before, and I can’t guarantee that I will never scab again (although, I hope I won’t ever be in such a desperate situation). My motto is do whatever makes you sleep better at night.  

And, there is plenty that one can do without taking on a very visible role in activism.

Mahmoud Khalil Rally

Sometimes I feel, to paraphrase Kate Tempest, I have already said whatever there is to be said on this blog, and every new post is just old wine in a new bottle. But, old wine is also wine, so I will keep going. One week after Hamas' attack on Israel, I attended the first of many London marches for Palestine. I came away from the march feeling fortified. I was reminded about that period this week, after a Palestinian student at Columbia university was abducted by ICE and whisked away to a detention facility in a god-forsaken town in Lousiana ahead of his planned deportation. The fascists like to make a performance out of cruelty, and Trump said they would be many more deportations of ‘Hamas supporters’. I felt the same mix of fear, helplessness and distress I had felt in the days after October 7, when the UK Home Secretary Cruella Braverman threatened protestors on visas with deportations. At least, she was good enough to mention that arrested protestors would be deported, not all protestors would be deported. But, not going to the protest was not an option, and I am glad I went. At times like this, it is good to be in community from time to time, even for a lone ranger like me. Being among like-minded feeling almost the same emotions is soothing. The conversations I had at today’s protest were about a  lot of things in addition to the situation we had come to protest. Because, in times like these, one becomes suspicious and judgemental of people who appear not be distressed by what is happening. One cannot wholeheartedly engage with people who appear not to be incensed about the situation (even though they very well might be, and could be doing more about it than you). But, if you are at a protest in this environment, you obviously care enough to turn up. Once it is established that the opposite person is a kindred anti-Zionist soul, it is much easier to talk to them.

Clocks Go Forward 2025

This winter was not like the previous ones, because I sprained my ankle a week after my last “clocks go back/forward” post. A sprained ankle meant that I couldn’t sit cross-legged, which put me off doing yoga. So, no cozy winter yoga sessions, or any yoga sessions at all. I sure could have used some relaxing yoga sessions because it has been an eventful five months. My last “clocks go back/forward” was a few days before the US elections, and expressed misgivings about each possible result. The (less) genocidal fascist corporate shill came to power and is unleashing chaos on a colossal scale. I have spilled enough ink writing about how the mundane will have to co-exist with the momentous. And, also about the realisation that I will have to play a part, however small, in building a world that I want to be part of. That has conviction has grown stronger, I am happy to report, despite the roaring binfire that the world is right now. The past few months have also been a period of personal growth on the personal and professional front. A popular saying goes that doing the same thing repeatedly and expecting a different result is the definition of insanity. I think that is a bit harsh because performing the same action in different circumstances can yield different results. But, one has to balance that with the  openness and humility to trying new things, and I have started to take baby steps in new directions on both fronts.

Nice Men

 I recently came across a twitter thread from a male dating coach for men about the scourge of Nice Men. A lot of women have written about men who are ostensibly "nice" and very vocal about how nice they are, hoping to win medals from women for their niceness. These are men who are nice beacuse they know they cannot get away wth being ass-holes. Because they don't have the looks, intelligence, talent, wealth, personality or anyone of the other virtues that move people to ignore your vices, at least temoporarily. At least the ass-holes are candid about what they want from women--which is usually sex--unlike nice men, who also want the same thing, but coupled with oodles of validation for their niceness. nice men often don't take rejection nicely. People, mostly women, have written reams about this online. This twitter thread was about the difference between niceness and kindness, which according to the poster, was mostly about being able to set boundaries. Needy people hesitate to set boundaries because they feel that will drive people away. Kind people accept that boudnaries might drive some people away but will lead to more authentic interactions with those that stay. If you are a nice person trying to turn into a kind person, you might try to overcompensate by being assertive when you don't need to be. If you are a caring, sensitive person with an anxious attachment style, the thing to work on is the attchment style, not the caring, sensitive bit. 

Sticking One's Own Neck Out

Apologies in advance if this post comes across as too preachy. Ever since moving to the US, I have been disheartened by the sparse turnout for Palestine among students, faculty and the general public. Yes, the Zionists are powerful, oragnized and vindictive but only the pepole who have really stuck their neck out have faced career-altering consequences. No one is going to get you sacked for signing a petition or turning up at a Palestine protest (unless you work for a tech giant or on Wall Street). And, this is a numbers game too, the more people who turn up, the safer it is for everyone, because, if nothing else, targetting too many people for reprisals is a logistical nightmare. But, it is easy to sneer at people who are not doing as much (or as little) as you for a particular cause as you are. If you are frustrated by a lack of turnout, you should take actions to increase the turnout, even if that action involves sticking your neck out a bit. I am contemplating such a move. Its not a courageous move by any stretch of imagination, but one that could piss off some influential people. And one that many of my peers would not contemplate. I spoke to my parents today, and while I didn't tell them what I am planning to do, they were very supportive of me being more pro-active. If the past 16 months have taught us anything it is that if you are not prepared to stand up for what you believe you end up in a belly-crawl before you know it. And, the powerful can justify their inaction (they have too much to lose), the weak can justify their inaction (they cannot afford to lose what little they have), but at the end of the day one has to live according to one's values and answer to one's own conscience. As I said in my first ever public speech last year, acting contrary to one's conscience is bad for the soul and it is bad for sleep. 

Mankeeping

 I have been writing about masculinity ever since I revived my blog seven years ago (see here, here and here). And. I have written about benign masculinity which prevents sensitive men who would identify as feminists from being emotionally and platonically intimate with other men. And, my views on the subject have also evolved. Earlier, I used to think that men should be enoucraged to form platnic relationships with women. But, I have realised that men can use women as therpaists even in platonic relationships. Yes, we all take the role of therapists occasionally with close friends. But, if the roles of therapist and client are not being interchanged from time to time then it not a balance relationship. And, it is easy for a cishet man to befriend a woman he is not physically attracted to and use her as a therapist. This evening, I read an article on "mankeeping"--a term which describes the act of women taking on the emotinal burden of supporting the men in their life as the latter fail to form intimate and nurturing relationships with other men. The article was in line with most of my opinions but the bit that surprised me was the descriptions of close friendships between cishet men that involved physical affection. I think most cishet men have no idea how to distinguish between sexual and non-sexual physical touch. Like, how can gay or bisexual women be physically affectionate with their female friends in a platonic manner. 

Loneliness Won't Kill You

 Gallons of ink are being spilt in the media about the epidemic of loneliness. Someone on Twitte called it a massacre, which I think is an exaggeration at a time when Israel  till a few weeks ago was masssacring Palestinians in full view of the world. The reasons ascribed to this epidemic of loneliness are smart phones, the design of urban spaces in late capitalism, the ease of accesing porn. Loneliness has been correlated with a  mutltiutde of negative outcomes including poor mental health and shortened life spans. All likely true. But, I also believe that loneliness shouldn't be treated as a phathology in the same league as cancer, or auto-immune diseases or  severe depression or bipolar disorder. Loneliness might shorten your lifespan (which is not an ambiguously bad thing?) but it won't kill you. How big a social cirlce you have is a function of many things, many of which have nothing to do with you as a person. By all means, one should try to build a community, but it often doesn't work. I am all for personal growth, and for introveerts such as myself to un-shell themselves. But, you can do all these things and more and still not have a community after years of trying. Maybe you are stuck in a small town. Maybe you have disabilities that keep you from socializing. Maybe you have been just unlucky in terms of the people who you have crossed paths with. What then? One might not be able to build a close-knit community and banish loneliness, but one can take steps to improve the quality of one's life.  I have written before about the way to allevaite loneliness is to seek company or seek a better quality of solitude. Back then, by solitude I meant long pensive walks in the evening. My definition of solitude now is mroe expansive. It is anything you do by yourself. The most solitude-improving step for me in the past few weeks has been to buy a TV. Sometimes loneliness is a message to chagen something about your life (if possible) but most times it is just something to be managed. 

Life Lessons from Ruskin Bond

 I first read Ruskin Bond's autobiography Lonefox Dancing when I was coming out the of the most difficult phase of my life seven years ago. The book helped solidify some of the truths I had accessed during my healing journey, and seemed like its perfect culmination. It fortified me for the dauting prospect of returning to England to resume my PhD studies, after having fled from there nearly a year ago. The book was as comforting presence on my bedside table for years, before I put it away. Two weeks ago, I picked up the book again during a difficult patch, and it didn't disappoint. I thought I would write another of my "book raves", but then I went back and read my blog post about it, which I had written seven yearas ago. But, it turns out I don't have anything substantial to add to that rave ( I sometimes feel like my blog posts during the first few years were full of wise insights, and now I am emptied of wisdom. But that is a post for another day). The world has never been a kind place to sensitive people, and the patriarchy makes the path to wholeness especially tricky for straight men. But, one can and must make peace with one's nature, and learn to thrive. To aid in that process, Ruskin Bond's autobiography is as good a guide as any I have come across. And, it is sprinkled with just enough humour to leaven this oh-so-serious process. 

Run for (Which?) Refugees

 I participated in a run for refugees in New Haven, Connecticut on Sunday. It was snowing heavily the night before, and the only reason I made it is a colleague offered to pick me up. Half of the Amherst club that I sometimes run up driopped out due to the road conditions, although it was a pretty smooth ride once we reached the highway. I am a bit ashamed to say that I treated it jsut like a ny other race. Trying to fnish the 5K within 22 minutes was top of my mind, rather than the cause I was runing for. It didn't help that the speeches at the event spoke about refugees in the abstract, with a shroud of silence around the event that is producing an unprecedented number of refugees if one compares it to the total population of the country. Some participants were wearing the keffiyeh, and I wish I had brought mine. It hadn't even occured to me. And it could have lead to some awkwardness as I was travelling with a group whose views on Zionism are not known to me. We had lunch after the race, when a wondeful woman who works with refugees joined us. We had a long and interesting conversation about her work, but Palestine did not come up, and neither did I bring it up. Did it have to? Should a person's view on Paletine be a braometer of their virtue and their integrity, given that speaking up for Palestine carries different consequences for different people? On this question, it is easy to be too sanctimonious or too forgiving.

Running at -15C

This was my first time runnig at below -10C. My previous runs since I returned to Amherst were at the relatively balmy -2C to -4C. And, I was not prepared for -10C. My first mistake was to shed a layer too quickly. I galloped to the start of the group run because I was running late, and worked up a good sweat. It  At that point, shedding a my top layer and leaving it in the car of one of the group members seemed like a reasonable thing to do. But, as I had half-feared the group's pace was much slower than mine, and my body began to chill at a rapid pace. To make matters worse,, one of my laces came lose, and when I removed my gloves to tie them, I discovered a) my fingers were pretty numb and barely up to the task of tying my shoe laces 2) fingers expand in the cold, and its very difficult to put gloves back on in the cold. To be honest, I had learned this on one fo the balmier runs, but I had no other option. It was either that or run the risk of slipping on my own shoelaces. And, the most sure-footed runner would be bested by the combination of a loose shoelace and an icy patch. I don't know how I managed to tie my shoe-lace and carry on. Maybe beacuse I had to, because stopping in the middle of nowhere during a run in frigid conditions is not an option. And, in the last third of the race, my pacier running mate suddenly seemd to grow a new lung andset of at a scorching pace. I am significantly younger and longer-limbed than him but it was all I could do to keep up with him. And, on the icy patches he darted ahead like a prize figure-skater. We reached the end of the run not a minute to soon for me, adn then I discovered that I couldn't bend my fingers. My fingers had turned numb on the bike ride back from the supermarket yesterday so I thought I would regain sensation within a few mintes. Boy, was I wrong. After 10 minutes in my pacy friend's warm car, I began to worry if I had frost bite. Shortly after, we went inside a cafe and I had to ask a university colleague to pay for my coffee because I simply couldn't use my phone. The cafe itself felt quite cold and I didn't feel fully arm until I was in a hot shower back home. Even now, nearly 12 hours later my finger tips feel sore and sensitive to the touch. Its safe to say, I won't be running in these conditions any time soon.

The Things One Does To Avoid Perpetual Internet Scrolling

 It took me a while to learn that one can spend hours and hours scrolling the internet. It could be doom scrolling, It could be stalking attractive people on social media, it could be watching viral videos that are so inane that you can feel your brain melt as you watch them. I have upped my internet hygiene game over the years, but it feels like an uphill battle. I have set timers for twitter and Instagram on my laptop browsers, I do not have any social media apps or browsers on my phone. My most recent and expensive cope was to buy a TV to give me something else to do in the winter evenings other than doomscrolling. This morning, I also realised that I take too long to get out of bed because I get on my phone after walking up. So, from tonight, I won’t sleep with my phone next to me.  

PS: One can take ages to get out of bed on cold winter mornings even without scrolling on the phone

Numbers Game

 Today I came across a tweet that said "Biggest mindshift I've ever had is when I realized everything is a numbers game. Getting discouraged after trying something a few times and it not working is the most crippling thing you can do to yourself". I don't think EVERYTHING is a numbers game, but a lot of things are. Rejections hurt less if you have other stuff in the pipeline to divert your mind from the current disappointment. This is true of stuff as myriad as rejected submissions to academic journals and being ghosted on dating apps. The other prospects demand your attention and also carry your hopes. Now, its not easy to add to your pipeline in both the above-mentioned examples. Writing academic articles is a long and laborious process. And, on dating apps, you have very little control on how many people match with you, especially if you are a man. But, even in cases where the pipeline is running dry, the knowledge that this particular rejection is hurting keenly because the pipeline is empty is itself a salve. Telling yourself that this hurts not only in and of itself but beacuse of the context can make you feel better and also push you to populate the pipeline if you can. 

Long Flights and Podcasts

 There is an idnian podcaster who does "long-form podcasts", some of which stretch to 8-9 hours. I believe very few people exist who have enough itnersting stuff to say that its saying will take that long. But, on long flights, the usual standards do not apply. I spent most of my 31-hours journey back to the US listening to his podcasts. I don't find more than a handful of his guests, but even that is enough to keep me occupied because of how long the podcasts are. The topics are usually light enough to not require heavy concentration. As someone who is not a sound sleeper, the podcasts are a godsend as they lull me to sleep. When I wake up , chances are the same podcast is still on, and sometimes I rewind it, sometimes I don't. It also helps that I have started choosing a window seat. For years, I would chose an aisle seat so that I wouldn't have to make people move if I needed the toilet but that meant virtually no sleep since passerbys would rub against my broad shoulders. Window seats are great for sleeping, but it van be a tad convenient if you need the toilet and you have big sleepers next to you. On the long leg of the journey, the guy in the aisle seat was asleep most of the time, and when he was awake, the girl in the middle seat took her turn turn to sleep. I don't undersand why big sleeprs choose aisle seatsOn long flights there invariably comes a point when you feel that you have flown for hours, but haven't even reached halfway. Long podcasts help you pass over that bump.

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No airport blog from Mumbai this time as I had neither the time or energy for it. India trips are always heavy on the body, but essential for the soul. This time I had my share of health wobbles--two colds (was under mistaken assumption that a cold gives you immunity for a bit), insomnia, unsettled stomach but no full-blown upset. India trips are always heavy on the body. This particular trip gave me a lot of food for thought as well as impetus for action, but I am not ready to blog about it yet. 

My Personal Writing History

 My recollection of my personal writing history was this: I started this blog in 2006, alternated between two and eight posts till 2009, and gave up personal writing until reviving this blog in January 2018. A few days ago, I went through the Documents folder that has passed through several of my laptops over the years, and realised I was wrong. It turns out that I was also a prolific writer in the intervening years. It is just that most of the posts were so angst-laden that I would not dream of putting them on the blog. And, then, from the year before I revived this blog, there are the files that were part of my therapeutic journey. Therapy gave a purpose and direction to my personal writing. In the process, I learnt that vomitting out your angst can bring momentary relief but little else. While it is better to vent into a diary rather than use a friend or well-wisher as a "garbage bin" (my therapists words) venting alone does not move one along the path towards recovery and healing. I am keen to visit some of the therapeutic learning techniques and exploer whether I can apply some of them to my current project. 

Passport Crisis Averted

 There is nothing like a close shave or mini-crisis to remind oneself to focus on the big picture when one is too caught up in the weeds of day-to-day life. I spent an very anxious half-day today after failing to find my passport this afternoon. Since I am at home in Thane everyone at home got dragged into the search. I had a feeling that the passport was at home, but couldn't bank on that feeling since I am scheduled to return to the US late next week. I had to start preparing for the fact that I might need a new passport and US visa. We reported it lost to the local police and I also filled out an application form for a new passport and took an appointment for the following day. Ultimately, the passport was found by my younger nephew, bless his heart. 

Losing a passport is hardly a crisis in the grand scheme of things, but it is enough of a headache to remind oneself that if one can deal with (mini)-crisis one shoould not fret about non-crises. It reminds me of a blog post I wrote 18 years ago about another close shave that shook me out of a melancholy phase in my life. These are a few lines from the blog post. 

And suddenly I didn’t feel so bad any more. At least no one was dead. As long as there is life there is possibility. Things are never as bad as they are made out to be. As long as there is life you can always retire to fight another day.

Intentional Friendship

 There are few topics I have written about more than friendship. As a long-term singleton who has lived abroad for 10 years, friends have been a huge part of my life. My only blog post to go micro-viral (more than 30 views) written18 years ago was on friendship. After reading that post, a person who became my closest friend for the following six years reached out to me. Up to that point, they had though I was an stuck-up dick. Over the years, I have written about the different types of friendship: such as heart friends--people whom I can spend hours and days with and who are close confidantes; intense friendships that ended, with or without fanfare, but which I deeply cherish; friends that I am intensely fond of but who are not confidantes; the challenges of friendship between men and women. So, what better way to break my blogging hiatus than with another post on friendship? Over the weekend, I spent a few days with a potential romantic interest. Pretty quickly, it was clear that romance was not on the cards, but we had some deep conversations and some bracing debates. Conversations which are reverberating in my head even days after our interaction. As we were saying goodbye, I remarked, somewhat presumptously, that I felt like we were already good friends. They replied that they were not looking for friends. Ouch! The rejection hurt even more than my disappointment that there would be no romance. But, this encounter got me thinking about my own approach to friendship. My first-ever blog has a line that goes"The hand of friendship is easily extended, and need not be withdrawn". That line was written 18 years ago, and I wonder whether it is time to rethink that approach and be more intentional when it comes to friendships, like this person. Friendships are important relationships, and should be not be a consolation prize for failed romantic interests. I have had people who I thought were friends who never made the time and space for me. Maybe they had too much going on in their lives, maybe they just didn't feel we got along as well as I did, who knows? But, the seeming lack of effort on their part did chafe. In contrast, in this instance I had someone say to me that I should manage my expectations about how much we will be in touch once we go our separate ways. I don't think I would ever have the spunk or self-assurance to say that to someone, but I respect people who do. I cannot be your friend because I don't have the time or emotional space in my heart for it, or I do not want to be your friend because in my opinion we did not vibe they way you thought we did. Which of the reasons it is immaterial. And, while I might not have the courage to be this direct, this approach can be adopted in more subtle ways. I have people I feel obliged to reach out to when I am in India even though we are barely in touch, and I don't particularly enjoy our time together. And, I don't think they would lose any sleep if they came to know that I didn't get in touch with them while I was in India. Maybe it is time to say a gentle goodbye to these relationships.